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Web3 doesn’t care about privacy

JaimeThompson 5y ago
Web3 isn't about privacy or getting rid of the current middlemen, it is about new people becoming the new middlemen so they can make lots of semipassive / passive income.
reph2097 5y ago
Web3 is a scam. Go away.
jessthevc 5y ago
shekarramaswamy 5y ago
In web2, we are beholden to centralized entities that monopolize and profit off of our data. Web3 promises to release us from these shackles by enabling everyone to access data living on the blockchain. While it is certainly appealing that institutions no longer have the power to hold our data hostage, it is still important to ask: what does the public and transparent nature of web3 mean for our privacy?
- dandanua 5y ago
  The rise of monopolies is absolutely unrelated to how web operates. Crypto world already has monopolies with unmatched power. And you have even less privacy there, because transactions are public.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    *Some transactions are public. Where Public == an Address. Wallet-Address pairings aren't public and Wallet can have many Addresses. You can have a new one for every transaction if you want. And it'll only become linked to you as a person if you withdraw to a bank. So I think it does have quite a bit of privacy.
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      On any given website, you can create an endless amount of accounts revealing exactly 0 personal information. Whereas with web3 you always need to expose an address that may or may not reveal some payments info So based on this knowledge, web3 is less private than what we have now
    - simooooo 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ssss11 5y ago
Web3 isn’t one-thing. There are many web3 categories (L1 blockchain, L2 roll up, dapps, nft markets, defi) and then within those, each product has a different focus. For example you might say Bitcoin doesn’t provide privacy you can see every transaction, but if you want complete encryption then there’s monero, secret, mina and others… To say “web3 doesn’t care about your privacy” is like saying vacation destinations are cold. Some are for sure, but others aren’t.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Did you read the article? It might be worth engaging with their arguments instead of just the headline
- andreskytt 5y ago
  Anything blockchain-based requires every user not only to trust, that their identity is private, but that it will remain so indefinitely. With all the nodes having access to all the data, you must assume nobody is ever going to find a way to use the data against you. Which in the modern world requires extraordinary optimism.
  - birracerveza 5y ago
    As usual, poorly informed article and poorly informed comments, eager to bash on Web3 without knowledge of the full picture and the ongoing developments. Example: https://oasisprotocol.org/ https://oasisprotocol.org/ Also, the fact that it's possible to interact with dapps without going through centralized servers it means that it's much harder to get metadata (ex. IP) about who performed a specific action.
    - rowathay 5y ago
      It’s possible to interact with dapps without going through a centralized server, for certain types of client hardware. Definitely not for mobile devices.
      - 5y ago
endymi0n 5y ago
Web3 also doesn‘t care about anything else than holding up just enough hype and credibility so the original creators of the Ponzi scheme can cash out.
- birracerveza 5y ago
- Animats 5y ago
  After several months of reading Reddit's r/metaverse, I have to agree. The number of crypto-related projects which have actually produced a working 3D world is very small. Most don't even try. The ones that work are mostly some web browser thing that looks like a Shockwave Flash game from 1999 or so. I'm interested in large 3D virtual worlds with user created content. I've read at least twenty metaverse "white papers" and "roadmaps" which go on and on about their "tokenomics" but have little or no info about how they actually intend to build a 3D world. The contribution of the crypto crowd to actually making it happen is near zero. I'm disappointed. I've seen "fake it til you make it" before, but a lot of those guys aren't even trying.
  - EGreg 5y ago
    The thing is, “utility” is easy to claim, and becoming easier in the metaverse. Consider the justification for “greater fool” economics from the last decade: Bitcoin ponzi: “store of value” is utility! Filecoin: storing files is actual utility ERC20 memecoin ponzis: “shibaMUSKinu community .. utility is coming… we will um, fork an open source wallet or dex” NFT ponzis: “join the bored ape punk community, utility is working out in our gym on a private island, only 1% ever bother to show up” Metaverse: “virtual worlds and real estate is utility! Accessorize your avatars. First people who come get to be the kings, next people can be the landowner class, later people will work their way up from serf. You’ll be able to fight and win virtual land, play to earn…” The thing is, many of these things can legitimately be considered something of a utility for someone. And frankly, this is STILL better than Web2 corporations owning the metaverse. It’s bad enough they employ psychologists to figure out how to make you more addicted to your phones and spending your time outraged, contributing content in political arguments while ignoring your kids. Imagine now you will be spending hours in virtual reality. What’s next, computer chips in your brain via neuralink? If it was open source software, at least I can sort of control the economics of it. Otherwise… by 2040… you are a slave, Neo! Think about it.
ique 5y ago
TCP/IP doesn’t care about your privacy.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  Sure. Im more inclined to agree with the other comment that says its ignorant to privacy. But let's say you're right. When designing the web 3.0, wouldn't you say one of the most important things would be avoiding the privacy pitfalls of 2.0?
- lanternfish 5y ago
  TCP/IP doesn't have prescriptive biases towards authentication and identity.
zipiridu 5y ago
Web3 has great potential by changing the incentive structure of the internet. Think of it like socialism vs capitalist. Each has their strengths but taken too far both can be bad. I think the current state has taken it too far on the socialism scale so we've ended up with a very shitty internet, just like you end up with shitty products in a completely socialist economy. It might take a while to play out but we might get much higher quality digital content over time this way.
- tgv 5y ago
  Last time I used internet, it was exploited by large, nearly unchecked, profit optimizing corporations. Where’s the socialism?
  - dougk16 5y ago
    Under extreme socialism, think Orwellian levels, definitions of words are inverted. So the argument would be, if one believes we're already deep into Orwellian territory, that what most people think of as some kind of extreme capitalism because we have these large, unchecked corporations running around, is actually extreme socialism, aka fascism: the merger of corporation and state. And that's the reason these companies have gotten so large and unchecked. That we're not in a free market, but rather dealing with cartels that have grown like weeds and enforced their monopolies through violence through co-opting and/or cooperation with the state. That's the idea, not trying to argue that's the case. Just giving a possible answer to your question. In reality we're all in a completely free, survival of the fittest-type situation. We're all gonna die someday and all that. It's just that society provides some nice illusions wherein we can debate about whether we're socialist or capitalist.
    - tgv 5y ago
      It doesn't make any sense to speak about inverting meanings of words, while completely redefining the meaning of socialism and fascism.
      - 5y ago
mattlondon 5y ago
In web3, your wallet ID (used for purchases and proposed for logins too) is an undeletable cookie that tracks you both online and off, and one that anyone can retrieve. This article seems to think that having a super cookie like this will make advertising less bad. I think it will be the opposite - instead of only Google/Facebook doing it, you're now going to have every single shady operation under the sun now able to use/mine/combine your data however they please with zero controls (and unlike HTTP cookies they'll need exactly zero investment & zero infrastructure to do so, so there is no barrier to entry to start using this data) Web3 is the advertising world's ultimate dream situation. It allows significantly more invasive tracking by tying online and offline, cannot ever be deleted or changed, and the same cookie ID is shared across all aspects of your life (unless you use multiple wallets with one-per-site, but my understanding is that an anathema to web3 concepts about data ownership)
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  But wallets can be swapped all the time, even moment to moment.
  - mattlondon 5y ago
    Each time you are adding more immutable data to the Blockchain, which cannot be undone. Each of your identities - to which all of your digital content is tied - is permanently associated with that ID. So if you just have throw-away wallets, how do you use that with your content? You cannot "own" your content if you keep having to abandon wallets to get a fresh advertising ID. And if you keep several different compartmentalized wallets around, as soon as you move something from one to the other or use a different wallet with the same login, you have permanently and irredeemably linked those identities.
    - chrischattin 5y ago
      - 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
The article is mainly about cryptocurrency wallets as identities. That may be a good idea or a bad idea. Worth discussing. It does make creating a new identity expensive and difficult. If you create a wallet with coins from another wallet, that's traceable. If you create a wallet with "grey" coins that have been through a mixer, that marks your wallet as suspicious. If you create a wallet with "white" coins, with fully traceable provenance, that's expensive.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Nobody cares about your privacy except insofar as they can monetize caring about your privacy
- didericis 5y ago
  I get what you’re saying and agree to an extent, but I think being overly cynical negatively affects selection pressure for who pursues an entrepreneurial path. There are people who would be perfectly happy to leave money on the table in order to increase the wide scale adoption of principles they believe to be important for society, such as privacy, eco friendliness, education, etc. If the expectation is that the business and product development world is solely about money and that principles do not have value in and of themselves, people who value principles over extracting every possible cent are more likely to avoid that world, which solidifies that image, which further reduces principled engagement, etc.
tiku 5y ago
It is easy to use different wallets per site to make tracking harder, in Metamask you can easily switch? Browsers like brave will perhaps also implement this I guess.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  You would have the problem that transferring between wallets links your identity. And I saw a recent report that using services like coin mixers taints the coins so exchanges won’t touch them or locks your account.
  - SubiculumCode 5y ago
    again that depends on the crypto you are sending. BTC yes. Monero? No.
gtsop 5y ago
I am really lost with this web3 thing. Is there a good resource that lays out the evolution of this concept in a "history-like" manner? Reading descriptions of what web3 is right now doesn't help me. The same thing happened with NFT.Am I officially too old to follow up on tech?
- mrweasel 5y ago
  That would be great, a Web3 starter guide. Right now it feels like an empty container in which you’re allow to stuff anything as long as it’s vaguely crypto related. Right now I’m questioning if Web3 is even a thing.
- can16358p 5y ago
  You aren't old. I'm really into crypto and relatively young. I've stayed away from the "crypto realm" for about a year and still playing catch up as a person who was involved in it. There's just too much going on.
- ozim 5y ago
  I really liked this description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
  - cfrs 5y ago
    That's a great video addressing many problems of crypto, like - issues with privacy - inability to hide data, piracy - manipulated prices (due to "anonymity") - bugs in smart contracts, problematic code redeploy - questionable economy models of NFT games
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  One thing I do know. I am learning Ethereum and the NPM library you use to interact with smart contracts either in the front end or back end is called web3. So maybe that is where the name came from or maybe the name came first and the library just used it.
surajs 5y ago
harshtruth_ 5y ago
To be fair, neither does web 2. If you want privacy you should take your computer offline.
abiro 5y ago
The title of the article is “The Duality of Web3: Privacy vs. Transparency” and it discusses challenges that need to be solved in Web3. The message of the article is certainly not that “Web3 Doesn’t Care About Your Privacy”. The title of the submission should be changed.
herunan 5y ago
I cringe with so many web3 conversations assuming that it will replace the current web. It’ll be a layer of abstraction on top of it, the same way web 2.0 was on 1.0. Also, no one’s going to flip a switch and turn the web into something new. Finally, people tend to neglect other populations that likely won’t have access to crypto wallets, such as kids. Those will still use web 2.0, as defined here.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Web3 is just a buzzword. It has no real substance or use case. Because crypto requires an endless stream of hype-terms to keep the pyramid growing, we get increasingly nonsensical ideas like NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, and Web3. Basically no one uses any of these things for anything other than pure greater-fools speculation.
whitepaint 5y ago
Meet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof
chrisco255 5y ago
Web3 is just a baby. It's quite remarkable how much hate it gets for merely having a vision of the world without tech monopolies controlling it. I wonder where that hate comes from.
- threeseed 5y ago
  You might want to look into who is financing Web3. It's the exact same VCs that bankrolled Facebook, Google etc.
  - whywhywhywhy 5y ago
    Why are people angry about it then if it’s the same as what we have already?
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      The constant stream of pump and dumps and propaganda validating those pump and dumps
keewee7 5y ago
Can someone explain why privacy coins like Monero are not more popular? There is something going on in the cryptocurrency communities that doesn't reward features that increase privacy and decentralization. Privacy and decentralization should be the core incentives to use cryptocurrencies.
- lottin 5y ago
  Why do you think the underground economy isn't more popular? I mean you can't get more privacy than that, no taxes, no regulations... it should be more popular right?
- Shatnerz 5y ago
  Regulatory pressure. With privacy comes illicit use. With illicit use, "what about the children / terrorism / etc..." becomes enough of a reason for regulators to pressure centralized exchanges to drop support. Without widespread adoption, centralized exchanges are needed to swap with more widely accepted monetary devices. If centralized exchanges are blocked, the on/off-ramp for privacy coins suddenly becomes much more difficult.
yobbo 5y ago
Web3 is ~sortof~ the hypothesized future state where apps/services can use decentralized methods of identity, authentication, and payment to interact with users. This would break the network- and mitm-effects that enable current web2 services to be so dominant. Over a long time perspective, this is probably inevitable. But what is the probability that current crypto currencies will play any part? Not high, I think.
tamrix 5y ago
Tor was for privacy. No one cares about privacy anyway.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Real Web3 is the proliferation of Onion services.
Hnrobert42 5y ago
Is web3 really based on blockchain technology? When did we all agree that blockchain has any real value, let alone that it should be the central technology underpinning the next evolution of the web? Personally, I hope blockchain is overblown. Given the amount of money in it, I know it’s not. It is here to stay in one form or another. But is it really already accepted wisdom that it will underpin the whole web?
- threeseed 5y ago
  > Is web3 really based on blockchain technology? It is specifically referring to applications built on Ethereum and doesn't actually have any technical connection to the web as we know it today. Only that it wants to replace it. > But is it really already accepted wisdom that it will underpin the whole web? No. It will have as much influence on the world as Bitcoin has had i.e. it will be popular amongst tech bros, criminals, gamblers, VCs etc. But won't really cut through to the mainstream.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > Is web3 really based on blockchain technology? When did we all agree that blockchain has any real value, let alone that it should be the central technology underpinning the next evolution of the web? We didn't, but blockchain proponents hijacked the term "Web3" like Facebook hijacked the term "metaverse".
douglaswlance 5y ago
The author and everyone commenting is making a categorical error here: A wallet is not your user account. A wallet holds many private keys. Each private key can be used as a user account. You can have an unlimited number of private keys. That means that you're only tracked as much as you want. Also, there are private chains you can use today. And they're only going to get better. We're talking about cryptography here. It will be private if you want it to be.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
  Question: why do we even need blockchain for this? Is this not basic public key cryptography?
  - douglaswlance 5y ago
    Because blockchain protocols allow us to generate consensus at scale. They use cryptography to do so. That's why we call them crypto-currencies.
    - cuteboy19 5y ago
      Consensus is not necessary to establish identity. Normal cryptographic primitives are sufficient for all identity schemes. Blockchain is just completely unrelated to the "one login all websites" idea.
      - douglaswlance 5y ago
        If you want to store user data with consensus, in a tamper-proof way that can be universally accessed you need to use blockchains. Or invent a new technology.
civilized 5y ago
The cult of web3 has the same vibe as the Pointy-Haired Boss breathlessly repeating talking points on how Watson Deep Reinforcement Machine Intelligence On The Cloud (TM) is going to revolutionize his business. "We barely know what it is, and of course no actual rational argument has been made for why it is needed, but... everyone's talking about it! We can't be left behind!"
- koonsolo 5y ago
  I'm sure the people working on all those web3 projects don't "barely know what it is". So you claim that the developers of for example SushiSwap barely know what it is?
  - idop 5y ago
    The thing about the financial world is that it is intentionally complex and full of gibberish in order to make it inaccessible to the layperson. Cryptocurrencies are exactly the same, and are on track to become even worse.
    - koonsolo 5y ago
      A smartphone features pretty complex hard and software. But that doesn't mean a layperson can't use it. Why do you think web3 services can't be interfaced with a good UX?
- deebosong 5y ago
  To me, that's the exact parallel that comes to mind for the current hype around web3/ crypto/ etc etc. IBM's hype campaign from the early-to-mid 2010's, on Watson, Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Cloud, and whatever other buzzwords were thrown into that PR carpet bombing campaign that was everywhere. I still don't know what any of those technologies do, and whether or not they're implemented in anything I'm using. But it sure sounded important and potentially revolutionary at the time!
  - civilized 5y ago
civilized 5y ago
"We need to liberate ourselves from Facebook and Google!" "YEAH!!!" "We need to build our OWN Internet!" "YEAH!!!" "Where EVERYTHING you do is on the Blockchain, public and immutable forever!" "YEAH!!! Wait, what?"
jsemrau 5y ago
Web3 is an Internet of values. We should know who gets payments for what. Not only to prevent crimes. Web3 doesn't mean Web2 ends.
jessthevc 5y ago

Web3 isn't about privacy or getting rid of the current middlemen, it is about new people becoming the new middlemen so they can make lots of semipassive / passive income.

reph2097 5y ago

Web3 is a scam. Go away.

jessthevc 5y ago

shekarramaswamy 5y ago

In web2, we are beholden to centralized entities that monopolize and profit off of our data. Web3 promises to release us from these shackles by enabling everyone to access data living on the blockchain. While it is certainly appealing that institutions no longer have the power to hold our data hostage, it is still important to ask: what does the public and transparent nature of web3 mean for our privacy?

dandanua 5y ago
The rise of monopolies is absolutely unrelated to how web operates. Crypto world already has monopolies with unmatched power. And you have even less privacy there, because transactions are public.
- exdsq 5y ago
  *Some transactions are public. Where Public == an Address. Wallet-Address pairings aren't public and Wallet can have many Addresses. You can have a new one for every transaction if you want. And it'll only become linked to you as a person if you withdraw to a bank. So I think it does have quite a bit of privacy.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    On any given website, you can create an endless amount of accounts revealing exactly 0 personal information. Whereas with web3 you always need to expose an address that may or may not reveal some payments info So based on this knowledge, web3 is less private than what we have now
  - simooooo 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ssss11 5y ago

Web3 isn’t one-thing. There are many web3 categories (L1 blockchain, L2 roll up, dapps, nft markets, defi) and then within those, each product has a different focus. For example you might say Bitcoin doesn’t provide privacy you can see every transaction, but if you want complete encryption then there’s monero, secret, mina and others… To say “web3 doesn’t care about your privacy” is like saying vacation destinations are cold. Some are for sure, but others aren’t.

beebmam 5y ago
Did you read the article? It might be worth engaging with their arguments instead of just the headline
andreskytt 5y ago
Anything blockchain-based requires every user not only to trust, that their identity is private, but that it will remain so indefinitely. With all the nodes having access to all the data, you must assume nobody is ever going to find a way to use the data against you. Which in the modern world requires extraordinary optimism.
- birracerveza 5y ago
  As usual, poorly informed article and poorly informed comments, eager to bash on Web3 without knowledge of the full picture and the ongoing developments. Example: https://oasisprotocol.org/ https://oasisprotocol.org/ Also, the fact that it's possible to interact with dapps without going through centralized servers it means that it's much harder to get metadata (ex. IP) about who performed a specific action.
  - rowathay 5y ago
    It’s possible to interact with dapps without going through a centralized server, for certain types of client hardware. Definitely not for mobile devices.
    - 5y ago

endymi0n 5y ago

Web3 also doesn‘t care about anything else than holding up just enough hype and credibility so the original creators of the Ponzi scheme can cash out.

birracerveza 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
After several months of reading Reddit's r/metaverse, I have to agree. The number of crypto-related projects which have actually produced a working 3D world is very small. Most don't even try. The ones that work are mostly some web browser thing that looks like a Shockwave Flash game from 1999 or so. I'm interested in large 3D virtual worlds with user created content. I've read at least twenty metaverse "white papers" and "roadmaps" which go on and on about their "tokenomics" but have little or no info about how they actually intend to build a 3D world. The contribution of the crypto crowd to actually making it happen is near zero. I'm disappointed. I've seen "fake it til you make it" before, but a lot of those guys aren't even trying.
- EGreg 5y ago
  The thing is, “utility” is easy to claim, and becoming easier in the metaverse. Consider the justification for “greater fool” economics from the last decade: Bitcoin ponzi: “store of value” is utility! Filecoin: storing files is actual utility ERC20 memecoin ponzis: “shibaMUSKinu community .. utility is coming… we will um, fork an open source wallet or dex” NFT ponzis: “join the bored ape punk community, utility is working out in our gym on a private island, only 1% ever bother to show up” Metaverse: “virtual worlds and real estate is utility! Accessorize your avatars. First people who come get to be the kings, next people can be the landowner class, later people will work their way up from serf. You’ll be able to fight and win virtual land, play to earn…” The thing is, many of these things can legitimately be considered something of a utility for someone. And frankly, this is STILL better than Web2 corporations owning the metaverse. It’s bad enough they employ psychologists to figure out how to make you more addicted to your phones and spending your time outraged, contributing content in political arguments while ignoring your kids. Imagine now you will be spending hours in virtual reality. What’s next, computer chips in your brain via neuralink? If it was open source software, at least I can sort of control the economics of it. Otherwise… by 2040… you are a slave, Neo! Think about it.

ique 5y ago

TCP/IP doesn’t care about your privacy.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
Sure. Im more inclined to agree with the other comment that says its ignorant to privacy. But let's say you're right. When designing the web 3.0, wouldn't you say one of the most important things would be avoiding the privacy pitfalls of 2.0?
lanternfish 5y ago
TCP/IP doesn't have prescriptive biases towards authentication and identity.

zipiridu 5y ago

Web3 has great potential by changing the incentive structure of the internet. Think of it like socialism vs capitalist. Each has their strengths but taken too far both can be bad. I think the current state has taken it too far on the socialism scale so we've ended up with a very shitty internet, just like you end up with shitty products in a completely socialist economy. It might take a while to play out but we might get much higher quality digital content over time this way.

tgv 5y ago
Last time I used internet, it was exploited by large, nearly unchecked, profit optimizing corporations. Where’s the socialism?
- dougk16 5y ago
  Under extreme socialism, think Orwellian levels, definitions of words are inverted. So the argument would be, if one believes we're already deep into Orwellian territory, that what most people think of as some kind of extreme capitalism because we have these large, unchecked corporations running around, is actually extreme socialism, aka fascism: the merger of corporation and state. And that's the reason these companies have gotten so large and unchecked. That we're not in a free market, but rather dealing with cartels that have grown like weeds and enforced their monopolies through violence through co-opting and/or cooperation with the state. That's the idea, not trying to argue that's the case. Just giving a possible answer to your question. In reality we're all in a completely free, survival of the fittest-type situation. We're all gonna die someday and all that. It's just that society provides some nice illusions wherein we can debate about whether we're socialist or capitalist.
  - tgv 5y ago
    It doesn't make any sense to speak about inverting meanings of words, while completely redefining the meaning of socialism and fascism.
    - 5y ago

mattlondon 5y ago

In web3, your wallet ID (used for purchases and proposed for logins too) is an undeletable cookie that tracks you both online and off, and one that anyone can retrieve. This article seems to think that having a super cookie like this will make advertising less bad. I think it will be the opposite - instead of only Google/Facebook doing it, you're now going to have every single shady operation under the sun now able to use/mine/combine your data however they please with zero controls (and unlike HTTP cookies they'll need exactly zero investment & zero infrastructure to do so, so there is no barrier to entry to start using this data) Web3 is the advertising world's ultimate dream situation. It allows significantly more invasive tracking by tying online and offline, cannot ever be deleted or changed, and the same cookie ID is shared across all aspects of your life (unless you use multiple wallets with one-per-site, but my understanding is that an anathema to web3 concepts about data ownership)

SubiculumCode 5y ago
But wallets can be swapped all the time, even moment to moment.
- mattlondon 5y ago
  Each time you are adding more immutable data to the Blockchain, which cannot be undone. Each of your identities - to which all of your digital content is tied - is permanently associated with that ID. So if you just have throw-away wallets, how do you use that with your content? You cannot "own" your content if you keep having to abandon wallets to get a fresh advertising ID. And if you keep several different compartmentalized wallets around, as soon as you move something from one to the other or use a different wallet with the same login, you have permanently and irredeemably linked those identities.
  - chrischattin 5y ago
    - 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

The article is mainly about cryptocurrency wallets as identities. That may be a good idea or a bad idea. Worth discussing. It does make creating a new identity expensive and difficult. If you create a wallet with coins from another wallet, that's traceable. If you create a wallet with "grey" coins that have been through a mixer, that marks your wallet as suspicious. If you create a wallet with "white" coins, with fully traceable provenance, that's expensive.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Nobody cares about your privacy except insofar as they can monetize caring about your privacy

didericis 5y ago
I get what you’re saying and agree to an extent, but I think being overly cynical negatively affects selection pressure for who pursues an entrepreneurial path. There are people who would be perfectly happy to leave money on the table in order to increase the wide scale adoption of principles they believe to be important for society, such as privacy, eco friendliness, education, etc. If the expectation is that the business and product development world is solely about money and that principles do not have value in and of themselves, people who value principles over extracting every possible cent are more likely to avoid that world, which solidifies that image, which further reduces principled engagement, etc.

tiku 5y ago

It is easy to use different wallets per site to make tracking harder, in Metamask you can easily switch? Browsers like brave will perhaps also implement this I guess.

Gigachad 5y ago
You would have the problem that transferring between wallets links your identity. And I saw a recent report that using services like coin mixers taints the coins so exchanges won’t touch them or locks your account.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  again that depends on the crypto you are sending. BTC yes. Monero? No.

gtsop 5y ago

I am really lost with this web3 thing. Is there a good resource that lays out the evolution of this concept in a "history-like" manner? Reading descriptions of what web3 is right now doesn't help me. The same thing happened with NFT.Am I officially too old to follow up on tech?

mrweasel 5y ago
That would be great, a Web3 starter guide. Right now it feels like an empty container in which you’re allow to stuff anything as long as it’s vaguely crypto related. Right now I’m questioning if Web3 is even a thing.
can16358p 5y ago
You aren't old. I'm really into crypto and relatively young. I've stayed away from the "crypto realm" for about a year and still playing catch up as a person who was involved in it. There's just too much going on.
ozim 5y ago
I really liked this description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
- cfrs 5y ago
  That's a great video addressing many problems of crypto, like - issues with privacy - inability to hide data, piracy - manipulated prices (due to "anonymity") - bugs in smart contracts, problematic code redeploy - questionable economy models of NFT games
quickthrower2 5y ago
One thing I do know. I am learning Ethereum and the NPM library you use to interact with smart contracts either in the front end or back end is called web3. So maybe that is where the name came from or maybe the name came first and the library just used it.

surajs 5y ago

harshtruth_ 5y ago

To be fair, neither does web 2. If you want privacy you should take your computer offline.

abiro 5y ago

The title of the article is “The Duality of Web3: Privacy vs. Transparency” and it discusses challenges that need to be solved in Web3. The message of the article is certainly not that “Web3 Doesn’t Care About Your Privacy”. The title of the submission should be changed.

herunan 5y ago

I cringe with so many web3 conversations assuming that it will replace the current web. It’ll be a layer of abstraction on top of it, the same way web 2.0 was on 1.0. Also, no one’s going to flip a switch and turn the web into something new. Finally, people tend to neglect other populations that likely won’t have access to crypto wallets, such as kids. Those will still use web 2.0, as defined here.

cuteboy19 5y ago
Web3 is just a buzzword. It has no real substance or use case. Because crypto requires an endless stream of hype-terms to keep the pyramid growing, we get increasingly nonsensical ideas like NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, and Web3. Basically no one uses any of these things for anything other than pure greater-fools speculation.

whitepaint 5y ago

Meet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

chrisco255 5y ago

Web3 is just a baby. It's quite remarkable how much hate it gets for merely having a vision of the world without tech monopolies controlling it. I wonder where that hate comes from.

threeseed 5y ago
You might want to look into who is financing Web3. It's the exact same VCs that bankrolled Facebook, Google etc.
- whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  Why are people angry about it then if it’s the same as what we have already?
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    The constant stream of pump and dumps and propaganda validating those pump and dumps

keewee7 5y ago

Can someone explain why privacy coins like Monero are not more popular? There is something going on in the cryptocurrency communities that doesn't reward features that increase privacy and decentralization. Privacy and decentralization should be the core incentives to use cryptocurrencies.

lottin 5y ago
Why do you think the underground economy isn't more popular? I mean you can't get more privacy than that, no taxes, no regulations... it should be more popular right?
Shatnerz 5y ago
Regulatory pressure. With privacy comes illicit use. With illicit use, "what about the children / terrorism / etc..." becomes enough of a reason for regulators to pressure centralized exchanges to drop support. Without widespread adoption, centralized exchanges are needed to swap with more widely accepted monetary devices. If centralized exchanges are blocked, the on/off-ramp for privacy coins suddenly becomes much more difficult.

yobbo 5y ago

Web3 is ~sortof~ the hypothesized future state where apps/services can use decentralized methods of identity, authentication, and payment to interact with users. This would break the network- and mitm-effects that enable current web2 services to be so dominant. Over a long time perspective, this is probably inevitable. But what is the probability that current crypto currencies will play any part? Not high, I think.

tamrix 5y ago

Tor was for privacy. No one cares about privacy anyway.

heavyset_go 5y ago
Real Web3 is the proliferation of Onion services.

Hnrobert42 5y ago

Is web3 really based on blockchain technology? When did we all agree that blockchain has any real value, let alone that it should be the central technology underpinning the next evolution of the web? Personally, I hope blockchain is overblown. Given the amount of money in it, I know it’s not. It is here to stay in one form or another. But is it really already accepted wisdom that it will underpin the whole web?

threeseed 5y ago
> Is web3 really based on blockchain technology? It is specifically referring to applications built on Ethereum and doesn't actually have any technical connection to the web as we know it today. Only that it wants to replace it. > But is it really already accepted wisdom that it will underpin the whole web? No. It will have as much influence on the world as Bitcoin has had i.e. it will be popular amongst tech bros, criminals, gamblers, VCs etc. But won't really cut through to the mainstream.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Is web3 really based on blockchain technology? When did we all agree that blockchain has any real value, let alone that it should be the central technology underpinning the next evolution of the web? We didn't, but blockchain proponents hijacked the term "Web3" like Facebook hijacked the term "metaverse".

douglaswlance 5y ago

The author and everyone commenting is making a categorical error here: A wallet is not your user account. A wallet holds many private keys. Each private key can be used as a user account. You can have an unlimited number of private keys. That means that you're only tracked as much as you want. Also, there are private chains you can use today. And they're only going to get better. We're talking about cryptography here. It will be private if you want it to be.

cuteboy19 5y ago
Question: why do we even need blockchain for this? Is this not basic public key cryptography?
- douglaswlance 5y ago
  Because blockchain protocols allow us to generate consensus at scale. They use cryptography to do so. That's why we call them crypto-currencies.
  - cuteboy19 5y ago
    Consensus is not necessary to establish identity. Normal cryptographic primitives are sufficient for all identity schemes. Blockchain is just completely unrelated to the "one login all websites" idea.
    - douglaswlance 5y ago
      If you want to store user data with consensus, in a tamper-proof way that can be universally accessed you need to use blockchains. Or invent a new technology.

civilized 5y ago

The cult of web3 has the same vibe as the Pointy-Haired Boss breathlessly repeating talking points on how Watson Deep Reinforcement Machine Intelligence On The Cloud (TM) is going to revolutionize his business. "We barely know what it is, and of course no actual rational argument has been made for why it is needed, but... everyone's talking about it! We can't be left behind!"

koonsolo 5y ago
I'm sure the people working on all those web3 projects don't "barely know what it is". So you claim that the developers of for example SushiSwap barely know what it is?
- idop 5y ago
  The thing about the financial world is that it is intentionally complex and full of gibberish in order to make it inaccessible to the layperson. Cryptocurrencies are exactly the same, and are on track to become even worse.
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    A smartphone features pretty complex hard and software. But that doesn't mean a layperson can't use it. Why do you think web3 services can't be interfaced with a good UX?
deebosong 5y ago
To me, that's the exact parallel that comes to mind for the current hype around web3/ crypto/ etc etc. IBM's hype campaign from the early-to-mid 2010's, on Watson, Internet of Things, Machine Learning, Cloud, and whatever other buzzwords were thrown into that PR carpet bombing campaign that was everywhere. I still don't know what any of those technologies do, and whether or not they're implemented in anything I'm using. But it sure sounded important and potentially revolutionary at the time!
- civilized 5y ago

civilized 5y ago

"We need to liberate ourselves from Facebook and Google!" "YEAH!!!" "We need to build our OWN Internet!" "YEAH!!!" "Where EVERYTHING you do is on the Blockchain, public and immutable forever!" "YEAH!!! Wait, what?"

jsemrau 5y ago

Web3 is an Internet of values. We should know who gets payments for what. Not only to prevent crimes. Web3 doesn't mean Web2 ends.

jessthevc 5y ago